Wilson Ramos missed a sign in the seventh inning on Wednesday, hitting away while Michael Morse sprinted down the third base line on a called squeeze play. Ramos realized what was happening just in time, fouled off the pitch, then walked up the third base line to consult with third base coach Bo Porter. After taking the next pitch, Ramos got it right — laying down a perfect bunt to score Morse and secure yet another one run victory (a 5-4 win), their third in a row against the cratering Cubs.

Calling for a second squeeze after a blown first one is risky. Which is why Davey Johnson figured the Cubs wouldn’t be ready. “You look at the situation, and all the components actually work to our favor,” Porter said after the victory. “You have a guy who doesn’t run as well at the plate. You have a guy who doesn’t run that well at third base and you don’t really want to send him on contact. And in all of my years of baseball, I’ve always said this: Catchers are normally the best bunters.”

The Nationals win tied them with the New York Mets in the N.L. East and put them two games over .500. But three other story lines emerged on Wednesday: Ryan Zimmerman finally seemed to get on track (3-4, with two RBIs and his fourth homer), the Nats’ line-up busted out for 13 hits (Bernadina, Morse and Ramos had two each), and the Nationals’ bullpen once again came through in the late innings: Ryan Mattheus, Henry Rodriguez and Drew Storen combined to hold the Slugs to one hit and no runs — standard work for a unit that keeps the team in games and the Nats in the win column.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Cubbie fans are beside themselves with worry. Bleed Cubbie Blue points out that the North Side Drama Queens are 5-26 when they allow opponents to score in the first inning — which they have done in all three of their losses against the Nationals . . .

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You had to see last night’s Cubs game versus the Reds to believe it – or maybe not. Twenty-four hours after Cubs manager Mike Quade had a closed door meeting to chew on his team for their lax play, the Cubs came out and handed the game to their opponents, committing four errors in a 7-5 loss in Cincinnati. And so the North Side Drama Queens are at it again: playing shoddy baseball and taking each other apart in public. “The harping was done last night,” Cubs manager Quade said after the embarrassing loss, “and I guess Knute Rockne I’m not.”

Last night’s game was only typical, in a “let’s watch the tsunami” kind of way. With the Cubs ahead 5-3 in the eighth and Kerry Wood on the mound, the Reds put on a rush: Cincy third sacker Scott Rolen doubled and Fred Lewis followed with an infield single. Wood has been in these kinds of situations before, so no worries — right? But when Wood fielded a Ryan Hanigan single, he threw wide of third, with the ball racing down the left field line. Two runs scored. Wood shook his head. Quade shook his head. And Cubs fans buried their faces in their hands. Pinch-hitter Chris Heisey then added a run on a sacrifice fly and Joey Votto added a double for another run. And that was that.

The same kind of thing happened in the bottom of the fourth, when first baseman Carlos Pena missed a ground ball, which was retrieved by second baseman Darwin Barney, who then threw the ball to Cubs’ starter Mat Garza covering first. Garza threw the ball home to catch a runner. But Garza’s ball was “a little off line” — and ended up in the camera well as the band struck up Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite. “The ball just slipped,” Garza said. Cincy fans, soaked and standing in the fog, couldn’t believe their good fortune. They should know better.

The Cubs, who are headed into Boston for the first time in 90-plus years (we have gained permission to attend from our corporate chairperson — and here she is), are unraveling before their fans’ eyes. Alfonso Soriano is leading the way. While Soriano is hitting the leather off the ball (11 home runs), his play in left field has come to define the team: when he’s not lying on his back and watching the ball go over his head (which he did last week), he’s throwing it to the wrong base — or trotting after it indifferently. To say he lacks hustle is an understatement — he doesn’t seem to care.

Last night, Cincinnati announcers were all over him — and Cubs’ G.M. Jim Hendry: “You know,” Fox Sport Ohio broadcaster Thom Brennaman said, “you look at this team and you look at the size of their payroll and it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, who in their right mind would pay some $130 million or more for this team?” That’s right: the Cubs are paying Soriano $14 million to play poorly, are ponying up $13.5 to Kosuke Fukudome –whom they have no intention of keeping — and are in up to their necks with Carlos Zambrano, who will earn (we use the term loosely) $17.8 million this year and $18 million next year. But that’s not the worst of it.

The Cubs have been diligently developing young talent, but apparently haven’t made a commitment to letting them play. Their best young hitter and outfielder is Tyler Colvin, who was sent down the other day to get playing time at Triple-A. The Cubs think it’s more important to play Fukudome, or Reed Johnson or Pena than Colvin — who might be one of the best young prospects in the game. None of them have a future with the team. Colvin does. The move nearly set off riots on the North Side, and now the fan clamor is growing for Quade’s public execution. The only real player of note in this entire crew is Starlin Castro, who is one of the best young shortstops in baseball — and seems to want to win. But you rarely hear that from Quade, who is more interested in defending his big salary players — which leads Cubs fans to think it’ll be more than a few years before they see some fresh new young faces on the North Side.

The word in Wrigleyville is that it was a mistake to hire Quade, when they could have hired Cubs’ Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, who is more than ready. Everyone, but everyone says Quade is the problem, including Bleacher Report, which blistered the manager for playing favorites among a cast of mediocre players who told Hendry they wanted him (and not Sandberg) as their manager. “What this comes down to is that he is in over his head as the manager of this team,” the BT correspondent wrote. “He thinks things out too much before making out the lineup each day, and over manages to make up for his lack of managerial know-how.” Will the Cubs retrench? Will Hendry recognize the error of his ways, fire Quade and hire disciplinarian Sandberg? Will he? Huh? Will he . . . will he . . . will he? Nahhhhhh . . . but you can be sure that if he did, that would be the day that Soriano watched the game from the bench, and Tyler Colvin started.

The Washington Nationals dipped below .500, dropping a rain rescheduled game to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-2 on Monday night. The Nats, still struggling at the plate, could not solve Ahoy lefty Paul Maholm, who threw seven innings of four hit baseball. “Maholm shut us down,” Nats’ skipper Jim Riggleman said after the game. “We hit a couple balls decent that they made some plays on. We really couldn’t elevate too many balls on him and get anything in the air to carry out in the gap or go over the fence.” Maholm, who has struggled in the early going, notched his first win.

Once again, the Nationals (who were much more worried about their starting pitching at the beginning of the year), were outhit — 6 to 5, with several Nationals (mostly the veteran off-the-bench players) mired in deep slumps. The Nats have been outhit in eight of the last ten games and remain 15th in N.L. team batting average and dead last in hits. The Nationals will open up against the Mets tonight in a three game set, before facing the world champion San Francisco Giants this weekend.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: If you didn’t see Jered Weaver’s complete game shutout of the Oakland A’s last night from Anaheim, you missed a gem. Weaver dominated the A’s, registering his sixth straight win, the most by any major league pitcher before April 25. Every year has it surprises, and this is one of them: Weaver is the best pitcher in the game. Weaver leads the major leagues in wins, ERA and strikeouts, after being 13-12 with an MLB leading 233 strike outs last year . . .

There were less than ideal conditions for playing baseball in Chicago last night — not only was it 43 degrees and wet (miserable, actually), but the North Side Drama Queens were on the field facing the we-can-do-no-wrong Heltons. The Rockies won, 5-3 — but in looking at the box score you have to wonder why. The Cubs rapped out 11 hits, but scored only 3, while the Rockies were held to four hits, and scored five. Kosuke Fukudome went 5-5 and raised his out-of-the-gates average to .478. Down behind the Cubs dugout, fans were razzing him: “Where the hell have you been?”

So why did the Cubs lose? Well, let’s see: the long ball was nowhere to be found (rookie Darwin Barney had a single dinger), Chicago’s heavy hitters (Alfonso Soriano, Giovany Soto and Carlos Pena) were of-fer ten and, oh yeah . . . shortstop wunderkind Starlin Castro committed three errors. The grass was slick, the announcers said. The weather was cold, the announcers said. Well, okay. But the grass was as slick and the weather as cold for Troy Tulowitzki, who was as smooth as silk on the other side of the diamond. “If you’re going to get beat, you at least would not like to gift wrap the damned thing for the opposition,” Cubs manager Mike Quade said after the game.

Scott Olsen’s seven inning gem against the Dodgers has Nats fans (and the Washington Post) oohing and ahhing about the team’s new attitude. “Instead of saying ‘Get ‘em tomorrow,’ the Nats have finally assembled a tougher, more irritable group that actually does it,” Post columnist and leading baseball pundit Thomas Boswell writes. Boswell goes on to note: “It’s not just the Nats’ record that is different this spring. The Nats themselves are. They’re starting to resemble the first gritty crew that brought baseball back to D.C. after a 33 year wait.” Tougher? More irritable? Gritty? My first reaction was to scoff: forget irritable and gritty — we need front line guys who can throw strikes. Please, please, please Tom (I know you’re the best, or close to it), but you know (and I know, and it’s no secret) that a rotation of Lannan, Stammen, Olsen and Hernandez are not going to get it done.

But in studying yesterday’s box score, I began to question by own cynicism. The difference in the Nats 1-0 win yesterday (a beautifully pitched game, if ever there was one) from any of their wins last year was obvious. For right there, in the middle of the line-up, were two players the Nats needed, but didn’t have, in the ’09 campaign. When Mike Rizzo signed Ivan Rodriguez and Adam Kennedy in the offseason, he not only filled two special needs, he added two gamers to the clubhouse — players who not only know how to win, but want to. While Rodriguez and Kennedy went a combined 0-6 yesterday, their role on the team has been indispensible, providing much needed leadership to a crew of talented, but young, players. Mike Rizzo added a caveat: “We’re a long ways from where we want to be.” Yeah, true. But you’re also a long ways from where you were.

The difference between the ’09 and 2010 Nats becomes more obvious when you go through the line-up of the Chicago Cubs, whom the Nats face in Chicago starting tonight. The North Side Drama Queens are a team of head cases and disasters-waiting-to-happen: Alfonso Soriano’s penchant to drop flies in left field is damn near agonizing, the perpetually petulant Carlos Zambrano has been demoted to the bullpen, the perennially injured Aramis Ramirez is a fracture away from putting the Cubs in the cellar and Kosuke Fukudome is overpaid and (undoubtedly) on the trading block. I know, I know — the Cubs just swept the Brewers and can hit the hell out of the ball. But the name of this game is pitching, and the Cubs don’t have it. Forget the starters (or don’t — if you really believe that Carlos Silva is the answer), and focus on the bullpen. The line-up of Berg, Grabow, Gray, Russell and Marmol is a patched together crew of rookies and semi-veterans (like Marmol) who have yet to prove they can hit the strike zone. Put another way, we would be justified in saying that the Cubs bullpen collapsed in the first two weeks of the season, but we’d be wrong. It had nothing to collapse from.

Cubs fans are on a death watch. Nats 320 has an outstanding interview with Cubs blogger Joe Aeillo of View From The Bleachers, and while Joe sounds positive enough, you can almost hear the ‘Oh-God-wadda-we-gonna-do’ tension in his voice. Joe talks about Uncle Lou’s bullpen problems and notes that Zambrano has been “the weak link” in the rotation so far this year, but the icing comes when Nats 320 asks about Soriano. “I’ll give you $20 right now, straight cash homie, if you convince the Nationals to take him back,” Joe says. That’s a deal we can pass up: we’ll keep Willingham. Soriano, the bullpen — they’re all problems. But the real problem facing the Cubs is down the road in St. Louis. The Cubs don’t have anyone who matches up with Chris Carpenter, Brad Penny or Adam Wainwright. I can’t stand Penny (he should just rob a 7-Eleven and get it out of his system), but the former Dodger bad boy is pitching brilliantly — with three wins and a 0.94 ERA. That’s a record that Zambrano can only dream about.

The Cubs haven’t had a team since Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were five outs away from the World Series. Remember? Prior was a USC power pitcher with Cy Young stuff and Woods struck out 20 in his rookie season. And then . . . and then, in the 8th inning of Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS a little pop foul that should have been caught did them in. It was their last shot. Neither Prior nor Wood have been the same since; Prior became a surgeon’s dream and is now out of baseball and Wood is in Cleveland, dealing with a cranky back. Looking at Prior (a shoulder, an achilles tendon, a hamstring, another shoulder), you can understand why Mike Rizzo wants Stephen Strasburg in the minors — and why he insists that any member of the Washington club have a winning attitude. Put another way, the problem with Cubs comes down to this: Carlos Zambrano throws the ball in the mid-90s and is capable of a 20-win Cy Young season. But wouldn’t you rather have Livan Hernandez?